Middle East agreements praised in the UN - but can fire on arms race

There were tributes from both Israel and the United Arab Emirates when the two countries spoke to the UN General Assembly late on Tuesday evening Swedish time.

Both celebrated the normalization agreement they recently concluded and emphasized that the agreement could contribute to a solution to the protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

"We hope that this peace agreement will give Palestinians and Israelis the opportunity to once again participate in peace talks," said Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister.

The sharper was the tone against the common enemy Iran.

"Both Arabs and Israelis jointly call for tough action against Iran," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

- And when Arabs and Israelis agree, others should pay attention.

Can fire on armor

While the parties describe the agreement as a peace agreement, others are skeptical.

Not least on the issue of growing arms purchases in a region which, according to observers, sees its greatest rearmament since the Cold War.

One of the United Arab Emirates 'demands in the negotiations must have been to be allowed to buy the United States' high-tech F-35 fighter aircraft.

The matter is now being considered by the United States, which has long had an established principle of preserving Israel's military superiority in the region.

Norwegian diplomat Jan Egeland, a key figure in the talks that led to the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, notes the role of the arms issue and does not want to call the agreement a peace agreement.

- It is no more concrete than what Miss World usually says about peace in the world, he says in SVT's Foreign Office.

Tense mode

If other countries also choose to normalize with Israel, they may also want to buy high-tech weapon systems.

At the same time, the situation vis-à-vis Iran in many countries is tense.

- There is a risk that the threshold for using military means will be smaller, says Pieter Wezeman, researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) to SVT.

All in all, this means that there are tendencies for further refurbishment.

In this week's episode of SVT's Foreign Office, the guests dig into the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - see the episode here on SVT Play.